On Being a Sexy, Beautiful, UnPretty Girl

There’s a tribe of women in their 30s and 40s who have screamed at the top of their lungs “I am not a pretty girl!” Whether you were joining in song at an Ani Difranco concert or snarling it at your dorm room mirror, it was such a relief to tell the world not to takes its eyes your eyes, tits, and waistline. “Don’t bother judging me, folks,” we were declaring. “I won’t be part of your campus beauty contests and I refuse to be some maiden fair.”

I think I was lying. Yes, I wanted to be valued for a hell of a lot more than my looks, but I was just singing along to drone out a deep, ugly sadness.

Though I wore my feminist heart on my sleeve, it always deserved to have an asterisk beside it. I never quite gave up the hope that when I grew up I would be pretty. That Ani song didn’t become my anthem because I’d evolved beyond “pretty” or because I insisted on being valued for something more important and enduring.

Mostly, I hummed that song to myself because I hated my face and my body so much.

But what about being a “sexy girl”?

Fast forward a decade or so. It’s Hurricane Sandy and I’m riding out the storm with friends lucky enough to have electricity and a phone. We decide to book Vedic astrology readings with this guy in West Virginia.

There was a slight delay because he had to borrow a friend’s cassette recorder to tape the phone calls. This was rather endearing in 2012. It also proved that he probably wasn’t looking at my Facebook profile when he told me that, according to my stars and planets, I was “what they call a sexy girl.”

I laughed, but I didn’t say “no I’m not!” As the mother of a three-year-old who spent way too much time working from home in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, this was nice to hear.

There’s an asterisk here too, though. (Ok, so depending on your opinion of astrology you may think this whole story is inadmissible, but bear with me). Apparently, the elements of my chart just didn’t add up. The astrologer declared that my birth time had to be off by about 40 minutes.

Here’s the thing, the timing of my birth is actually part of family lore. Until this fellow told me otherwise, I proudly accepted the truth that I was born under the sign of Gemini on June 17 at 6:17 PM. This also happened to be my mother’s 29th birthday and Father’s Day to boot. My mom isn’t around to ask, but my dad swears the timing was exact. Of course, my father also swears that my sister and I were perfect children, so I just don’t know.

Apparently, I could either be sexy (in the cosmic sense) or I could be the 6-17 kid.

Will beautiful do?

Right now, my jeans feel uncomfortable because the “I can eat anything; I’m nursing!” magic has worn off. The bags under my eyes are looking like suitcases. Everything aches and feels likes it’s the wrong size.

For once, I don’t really mind.

Maybe it's the new lipstick. Perhaps it's because I stole a few extra moments to wear something that I really liked. Ultimately, I guess it is just because I knew I walked through my day knowing that I wanted to tell as story about accepting the skin I'm in.

Today, in that ShopRite full of so many gray, defeated people who filled their carts with frozen meals and paper plates, I felt like I was glowing.

I think I was feeling pretty. I’m sure I was feeling as sexy as a woman could while wiping a little girl’s nose. I know I felt beautiful.

I made eye contact with people and gave them a smile that seemed to well up from deep within my belly, from a place that would never feel the pinch of too-tight jeans. I didn’t want the other shoppers to notice whether I was good looking enough. I just wanted to share what felt a lot like simple, unencumbered peace and joy.

Please share this story with someone beautiful and tell me if you used to sing "Not a Pretty Girl" too.

Knowing Motherhood by Guest Storyteller Barb Buckner Suárez, #365StrongStories 56

My baby lay on my chest, warm and wet from being born just moments before. I called my parents to announce they were grandparents - again. This was their 10th, but my first. Still high on the other side of giving birth, I looked at her impossibly tiny fingernails, and dialed. My Dad picked up on the first ring shouting with joy. Mom got on next and the minute I heard her voice, I burst into tears. “I’m so sorry!”

Concerned, she asked, “For what, honey?”

“For all the times that I said I’d be home by midnight and didn’t come home until 2 am! For all the times you must have worried. For everything!”

She chuckled, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Which only made me sob harder.

How is it that the word “mother” remains unknown, unknowable, until you are a mother yourself?

Just as my mothering journey was beginning, the veil that obscured motherhood had been pulled away. Suddenly and with great clarity, I realized that all of those times I’d been convinced my Mom was “ruining my life” were just her attempts to save me from harm. I couldn’t make sense of this at the time. The center of my universe was me.

Now, holding this completely dependent, tiny little person, I realized the enormity of it all. I had just irrevocably committed myself to doing everything possible to raise this child into adulthood with an intact and healthy spirit. What the hell was I getting myself into?

I couldn’t believe that my Mom had made this commitment six times - all without a mother of her own to call and apologize to.

Where does this determination come from? To love so fiercely that your heart catches in your throat at the thought of your baby ever getting hurt?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. But my Mom was willing to show up and answer them. I’m forever grateful that I have the opportunity to show up and answer them myself, however imperfectly.

But I admit it: I’m looking forward to receiving that call to support my own daughters when it's time for them show up and try to answer these questions on their own motherhood journeys.

Barb Buckner Suárez works with expectant couples as they are preparing to become a family. She believes that every woman should have a birth story worth telling. You can find more of her writing at www.birthhappens.com

5 Reasons to Keep Writing & Creating Content You Care About, #365StrongStories 55

Anyone could blame the weather. Here in New York, we have been been slipping from spring sunshine to a few inches of February fluff to slush and misty gloom. All of it is born away on a tide of mud that just never washes out.

Or, I could blame motherhood and all the ways it shatters my focus and steals my sleep.

And, if I chose, I could blame the creative impulse itself. This need to write and share and connect with readers is a mad, beautiful journey.

No matter the reason, it’s easy to lose track of the “why” during long, dreary days at home in front of the laptop. It's easy to forget about the great goals when the to do list never ends.

Why add more words and pages to this noisy digital world? Why steal time from my family just to try to be seen and read by strangers? Why not just get a job instead of making it all up as I go along?

The welter of worries that threatens to swallow all the creative and professional dreams. You know them too, I am guessing?

And so, the aimless Facebook scrolling begins. Fortunately, I’ve been at this game of questions long enough to stop myself before I start reading my spam messages or looking up high school boyfriends’ little sisters.

Instead, I seek out the resources I know will replenish me and get me back on course: the insights from clients and colleagues I know and love.

We're much the same as we try to carve out enough space for family and relationships and for entrepreneurship and creative passions too. We have unique goals and needs and sources of inspiration to make the balancing act work, but when we can rally together to share the “why” of it all, all of us can get back on track.

This isn't the first time I've worried that there are too many stories out there already, of course.

Luckily, last time I began to believe that the emerging thought leaders I long to help were just too busy being awesome at life and work to sit down and create content they really care about, a wise friend and colleague got me back on track. She reminded that she knows writing and diving deep into her ideas is vital to her practice and her big dreams.

As she described it, you need to write blog posts and HuffPo articles and all the rest because:

• Content builds trust
• It’s how clients get to know you
• It’s how you weed out the wrong people before they even call
• It’s how you first inspire people to know you’re worth your full fee
• Content makes people want more of you in programs and classes and all the good stuff you want to sell

I couldn't have said it better myself!

Your turn: Are you convince you need to create content? What's your "why"? (And I would love your answers even if you're thinking "I know I should start writing but I just can't make it a priority")

Permission to Read Signs Sent By a Friendly Universe, #365StrongStories 54

The morning was shorter than it was supposed to be. Our little one was awake half the night asking to use the potty and singing every song she knew, so we needed that extra hour of sleep. We missed the bus and I was crazy late for playgroup drop off, but this was my one, precious day alone in the house and I was going to do amazing things even if I'd lost 90 minutes already.

And then, on my solitary drive home, the school sent a text about early dismissal due to hypothetical snow. The afternoon just got a whole lot short too.

So I did what every brilliant American mom entrepreneur does when the going gets tough - I called husband to commiserate and think through how rescheduling my clients would impact the kid yoga/ decent dinner/ bath night juggle.

We were shifting gears from strategizing to complaining when I saw the birds. “Honey, I just need to shut up and drive,” I said. “I’ve seen a deer, a hawk, and a pair of cardinals in the last two minutes. I need to pay attention to something.”

As much as I may lament being married to one of those spectacularly practical engineer types, I love this man who says "I love you" and accepts animal totem sightings without question.

For a few minutes, I was one with the curves in the country lane. The protective swell of the Shawangunk Ridge and its mighty Mohonk Mountain House promised me that I am in just the right place at just the right moment.

But when I hit a stop sign, I find my fingers fussing at the phone screen. I'm seeking solace or maybe just a podcast. For once I feel guided rather than addicted as I seek out a series I haven’t listened to in months - Tara Brach’s weekly teachings on Buddhism.

Without taking you on a tour of my most recent spiritual awakening, let it suffice to say that an episode called “Trusting Ourselves, Trusting Life” was like a love letter written to my spinning soul.

And when Tara offered up this sweeping prompt from Albert Einstein, it was like the arrow through my laid bare heart:

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”

The weather isn’t out to get me. The animals who come out to greet me might really be there to wish me well. I’m choosing to believe that this is a friendly world… how else could I push my little girls into it every day?

Your turn: what happened today that proved we live in a friendly universe? And if it felt like a hostile world, the #365StrongStories community will hold you through that too.

Conversations With an Empty Chair, #365StrongStories 53

One Friday, my Mom and I spent the day in the kitchen talking about a revolution.  Well, we were whispering about the stuff that eventually leads to revolution. We were talking about the state of the world and daring to examine our fears and entertain all the “what ifs?” What happens when we all find out that Al Gore has been right about the climate?  What happens when people really start to run out of water? How many links in the chain have to break before our global network of food distribution is disrupted? In what part of the psyche and the spirit should stories like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road reside?

It has been six years since my mother and I had the luxury of marinating on our 3 a.m. worries together. We lavished so much attention on hypothetical global crises and never spared a thought for the private tragedies that could be so much harder to bear.

We had no idea then that mom had a few hundred thousand minutes left to live. She’d be dead of a sudden heart attack by mid-summer and she’d never know if any our great big global fears would change our comfortable American lives.

Now that I sit alone at the same kitchen in 2016, I don’t have any clarity more clarity about the fate of western civilization. I’m not even sure have any more perspective on the unbearably brief and precious nature of an individual life. I still wish away time as I long for spring and pray that the tougher phases of childhood will pass quickly.

But then I dive deep into this line from Natalie Goldberg: “Give everything while you can.”

I think it’s easy to misread this as “do more!” After all, we live in a “lean in” and “manifest 6 figures in 30 days” kind of world. But I guess I have learned enough about mortality and personal tragedy to reframe these words into those that heal rather than strain.

That winter day in 2010, my mother and I didn’t leave the kitchen. We didn’t solve a single problem or even take the dog for a walk. We snuggled my new baby girl and we loved one another and we dared to be vulnerable and speak our truths. Though I cry as I type these words, it’s just because I am overcome with gratitude for knowing that on that particular day, we gave each other everything while we could.